Our heroic people have struggled for 44 years
from this small Caribbean island just a few miles away from the most
formidable imperial power ever known by mankind. In so doing, they have
written an unprecedented chapter in history. Never has the world
witnessed such an unequal fight.

Some may have believed that the rise of the
empire to the status of the sole superpower, with a military and
technological might with no balancing pole anywhere in the world, would
frighten or dishearten the Cuban people. Yet, today they have no choice
but to watch in amazement the enhanced courage of this valiant people.
On a day like today, this glorious international workers’ day, which
commemorates the death of the five martyrs of Chicago, I declare, on
behalf of the one million Cubans gathered here, that we will face up to
any threats, we will not yield to any pressures, and that we are
prepared to defend our homeland and our Revolution with ideas and with
weapons to our last drop of blood.

What is Cuba’s sin? What honest person has any
reason to attack her?

With their own blood and the weapons seized from
the enemy, the Cuban people overthrew a cruel tyranny with 80,000 men
under arms, imposed by the U.S. government.

Cuba was the first territory free from
imperialist domination in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the only
country in the hemisphere, throughout post-colonial history, where the
torturers, murderers and war criminals that took the lives of tens of
thousands of people were exemplarily punished.

All of the country’s land was recovered and
turned over to the peasants and agricultural workers. The natural
resources, industries and basic services were placed in the hands of
their only true owner: the Cuban nation.

In less than 72 hours, fighting ceaselessly, day
and night, Cuba crushed the Bay of Pigs mercenary invasion organized by
a U.S. administration, thereby preventing a direct military intervention
by this country and a war of incalculable consequences. The Revolution
already had the Rebel Army, over 400,000 weapons and hundreds of
thousands of militia members.

In 1962, Cuba confronted with honor, and without
a single concession, the risk of being attacked with dozens of nuclear
weapons.

It defeated the dirty war that spread throughout
the entire country, at a cost in human lives even greater than that of
the war of liberation.

It stoically endured thousands of acts of
sabotage and terrorist attacks organized by the U.S. government.

It thwarted hundreds of assassination plots
against the leaders of the Revolution.

While under a rigorous blockade and economic
warfare that have lasted for almost half a century, Cuba was able to
eradicate in just one year the illiteracy that has still not been
overcome in the course of more than four decades by the rest of the
countries of Latin America, or the United States itself.

It has brought free education to 100% of the
country’s children.

It has the highest school retention rate –over
99% between kindergarten and ninth grade– of all of the nations in the
hemisphere.

Its elementary school students rank first
worldwide in the knowledge of their mother language and mathematics.

The country also ranks first worldwide with the
highest number of teachers per capita and the lowest number of students
per classroom.

All children with physical or mental challenges
are enrolled in special schools.

Computer education and the use of audiovisual
methods now extend to all of the country’s children, adolescents and
youth, in both the cities and the countryside.

For the first time in the world, all young people
between the ages of 17 and 30, who were previously neither in school nor
employed, have been given the opportunity to resume their studies while
receiving an allowance.

All citizens have the possibility of undertaking
studies that will take them from kindergarten to a doctoral degree
without spending a penny.

Today, the country has 30 university graduates,
intellectuals and professional artists for every one there was before
the Revolution.

The average Cuban citizen today has at the very
least a ninth-grade level of education.

Not even functional illiteracy exists in Cuba.

There are schools for the training of artists and
art instructors throughout all of the country’s provinces, where over
20,000 young people are currently studying and developing their talent
and vocation. Tens of thousands more are doing the same at vocational
schools, and many of these then go on to undertake professional studies.

University campuses are progressively spreading
to all of the country’s municipalities. Never in any other part of the
world has such a colossal educational and cultural revolution taken
place as this that will turn Cuba, by far, into the country with the
highest degree of knowledge and culture in the world, faithful to
Martí’s profound conviction that "no freedom is possible without
culture."

Infant mortality has been reduced from 60 per
1000 live births to a rate that fluctuates between 6 and 6.5, which is
the lowest in the hemisphere, from the United States to Patagonia.

Today, in our country, people die of the same
causes as in the most highly developed countries: cardiovascular
diseases, cancer, accidents, and others, but with a much lower incidence.

A profound revolution is underway to bring
medical services closer to the population, in order to facilitate access
to health care centers, save lives and alleviate suffering.

In-depth research is being carried out to break
the chain, mitigate or reduce to a minimum the problems that result from
genetic, prenatal or childbirth-related causes.

Cuba is today the country with the highest number
of doctors per capita in the world, with almost twice as many as those
that follow closer.

Our scientific centers are working relentlessly
to find preventive or therapeutic solutions for the most serious
diseases.

Cubans will have the best healthcare system in
the world, and will continue to receive all services absolutely free of
charge.

Social security covers 100% of the country’s
citizens.

In Cuba, 85% of the people own their homes and
they pay no property taxes on them whatsoever. The remaining 15% pay a
wholly symbolic rent, which is only 10% of their salary.

Illegal drug use involves a negligible percentage
of the population, and is being resolutely combated.

Lottery and other forms of gambling have been
banned since the first years of the Revolution to ensure that no one
pins their hopes of progress on luck.

There is no commercial advertising on Cuban
television and radio or in our printed publications. Instead, these
feature public service announcements concerning health, education,
culture, physical education, sports, recreation, environmental
protection, and the fight against drugs, accidents and other social
problems. Our media educate, they do not poison or alienate. They do not
worship or exalt the values of decadent consumer societies.

Discrimination against women was eradicated, and
today women make up 64% of the country’s technical and scientific
workforce.

From the earliest months of the Revolution, not a
single one of the forms of racial discrimination copied from the south
of the United States was left intact. In recent years, the Revolution
has been particularly striving to eliminate any lingering traces of the
poverty and lack of access to education that afflicted the descendants
of those who were enslaved for centuries, creating objective differences
that tended to be perpetuated. Soon, not even a shadow of the
consequences of that terrible injustice will remain.

There is no cult of personality around any living
revolutionary, in the form of statues, official photographs, or the
names of streets or institutions. The leaders of this country are human
beings, not gods.

In our country there are no paramilitary forces
or death squads, nor has violence ever been used against the people.
There are no executions without due process and no torture. The people
have always massively supported the activities of the Revolution. This
rally today is proof of that.

Light years separate our society from what has
prevailed until today in the rest of the world. We cultivate brotherhood
and solidarity among individuals and peoples both in the country and
abroad.

The new generations and the entire people are
being educated about the need to protect the environment. The media are
used to build environmental awareness.

Our country steadfastly defends its cultural
identity, assimilating the best of other cultures while resolutely
combating everything that distorts, alienates and degrades.

The development of wholesome, non-professional
sports has raised our people to the highest ranks worldwide in medals
and honors.

Scientific research, at the service of our people
and all humanity, has increased several-hundredfold. As a result of
these efforts, important medications are saving lives in Cuba and other
countries.

Cuba has never undertaken research or development
of a single biological weapon, because this would be in total
contradiction with the principles and philosophy underlying the
education of our scientific personnel, past and present.

In no other people has the spirit of
international solidarity become so deeply rooted.

Our country supported the Algerian patriots in
their struggle against French colonialism, at the cost of damaging
political and economic relations with such an important European country
as France.

We sent weapons and troops to defend Algeria from
Moroccan expansionism, when the king of this country sought to take
control of the iron mines of Gara Djebilet, near the city of Tindouf, in
southwest Algeria.

At the request of the Arab nation of Syria, a
full tank brigade stood guard between 1973 and 1975 alongside the Golan
Heights, when this territory was unjustly seized from that country.

The leader of the Republic of Congo when it first
achieved independence, Patrice Lumumba, who was harassed from abroad,
received our political support. When he was assassinated by the colonial
powers in January of 1961, we lent assistance to his followers.

Four years later, in 1965, Cuban blood was shed
in the western region of Lake Tanganyika, where Che Guevara and more
than 100 Cuban instructors supported the Congolese rebels who were
fighting against white mercenaries in the service of the man supported
by the West, that is, Mobutu whose 40 billion dollars, the same that he
stole, nobody knows what European banks they are kept in, or in whose
power.

The blood of Cuban instructors was shed while
training and supporting the combatants of the African Party for the
Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, who fought under the command of
Amilcar Cabral for the liberation of these former Portuguese colonies.

The same was true during the ten years that Cuba
supported Agostinho Neto’s MPLA in the struggle for the independence of
Angola. After independence was achieved, and over the course of 15
years, hundreds of thousands of Cuban volunteers participated in
defending Angola from the attacks of racist South African troops that in
complicity with the United States, and using dirty war tactics, planted
millions of mines, wiped out entire villages, and murdered more than
half a million Angolan men, women and children.

In Cuito Cuanavale and on the Namibian border, to
the southwest of Angola, Angolan and Namibian forces together with
40,000 Cuban troops dealt the final blow to the South African troops.
This resulted in the immediate liberation of Namibia and speeded up the
end of apartheid by perhaps 20 to 25 years. At the time, the South
Africans had seven nuclear warheads that Israel had supplied to them or
helped them to produce, with the full knowledge and complicity of the
U.S. government.

Throughout the course of almost 15 years, Cuba
had a place of honor in its solidarity with the heroic people of Viet
Nam, caught up in a barbaric and brutal war with the United States. That
war killed four million Vietnamese, in addition to all those left
wounded and mutilated, not to mention the fact that the country was
inundated with chemical compounds that continue to cause incalculable
damage. The pretext: Viet Nam, a poor and underdeveloped country located
20,000 kilometers away, constituted a threat to the national security of
the United States.

Cuban blood was shed together with that of
citizens of numerous Latin American countries, and together with the
Cuban and Latin American blood of Che Guevara, murdered on instructions
from U.S. agents in Bolivia, when he was wounded and being held prisoner
after his weapon had been rendered useless by a shot received in battle.

The blood of Cuban construction workers, that
were nearing completion of an international airport vital for the
economy of a tiny island fully dependent on tourism, was shed fighting
in defense of Grenada, invaded by the United States under cynical
pretexts.

Cuban blood was shed in Nicaragua, when
instructors from our Armed Forces were training the brave Nicaraguan
soldiers confronting the dirty war organized and armed by the United
States against the Sandinista revolution.

And there are even more examples.

Over 2000 heroic Cuban internationalist
combatants gave their lives fulfilling the sacred duty of supporting the
liberation struggles for the independence of other sister nations.
However, there is not one single Cuban property in any of those
countries. No other country in our era has exhibited such sincere and
selfless solidarity.

Cuba has always preached by example. It has never
given in. It has never sold out the cause of another people. It has
never made concessions. It has never betrayed its principles. There must
be some reason why, just 48 hours ago, it was reelected by acclamation
in the United Nations Economic and Social Council to another three years
in the Commission on Human Rights, of which it has now been a member for
15 straight years.

More than half a million Cubans have carried out
internationalist missions as combatants, as teachers, as technicians or
as doctors and health care workers. Tens of thousands of the latter have
provided their services and saved millions of lives over the course of
more than 40 years. There are currently 3000 specialists in
Comprehensive General Medicine and other healthcare personnel working in
the most isolated regions of 18 Third World countries. Through
preventive and therapeutic methods they save hundreds of thousands of
lives every year, and maintain or restore the health of millions of
people, without charging a penny for their services.

Without the Cuban doctors offered to the United
Nations in the event that the necessary funds are obtained –without
which entire nations and even whole regions of sub-Saharan Africa face
the risk of perishing– the crucial programs urgently needed to fight
AIDS would be impossible to carry out.

The developed capitalist world has created
abundant financial capital, but it has not in any way created the human
capital that the Third World desperately needs.

Cuba has developed techniques to teach reading
and writing by radio, with accompanying texts now available in five
languages –Haitian Creole, Portuguese, French, English and Spanish– that
are already being used in numerous countries. It is nearing completion
of a similar program in Spanish, of exceptionally high quality, to teach
literacy by television. These are programs that were developed in Cuba
and are genuinely Cuban. We are not interested in patents and exclusive
copyrights. We are willing to offer them to all of the countries of the
Third World, where most of the world’s illiterates are concentrated,
without charging a penny. In five years, the 800 million illiterate
people in the world could be reduced by 80%, at a minimal cost.

After the demise of the USSR and the socialist
bloc, nobody would have bet a dime on the survival of the Cuban
Revolution. The United States tightened the blockade. The Torricelli and
Helms-Burton Acts were adopted, both extraterritorial in nature. We
abruptly lost our main markets and supplies sources. The population’s
average calorie and protein consumption was reduced by almost half. But
our country withstood the pressures and even advanced considerably in
the social field.

Today, it has largely recovered with regard to
nutritional requirements and is rapidly progressing in other fields.
Even in these conditions, the work undertaken and the consciousness
built throughout the years succeeded in working miracles. Why have we
endured? Because the Revolution has always had, as it still does and
always will to an ever-greater degree, the support of the people, an
intelligent people, increasingly united, educated and combative.

Cuba was the first country to extend its
solidarity to the people of the United States on September 11, 2001. It
was also the first to warn of the neo-fascist nature of the policy that
the extreme right in the United States, which fraudulently came to power
in November of 2000, was planning to impose on the rest of the world.
This policy did not emerge as a response to the atrocious terrorist
attack perpetrated against the people of the United States by members of
a fanatical organization that had served other U.S. administrations in
the past. It was coldly and carefully conceived and developed, which
explains the country’s military build-up and enormous spending on
weapons at a time when the Cold War was already over, and long before
September 11, 2001. The fateful events of that day served as an ideal
pretext for the implementation of such policy.

On September 20 of that year, President Bush
openly expressed this before a Congress shaken by the tragic events of
nine days earlier. Using bizarre terminology, he spoke of "infinite
justice" as the goal of a war that would apparently be infinite as well.

"Americans should not expect one battle, but a
lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen."

"We will use every necessary weapon of war."

"Every nation, in every region, now has a
decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the
terrorists."

"I've called the Armed Forces to alert, and there
is a reason. The hour is coming when America will act."

"This is civilization's fight."

"…the great achievement of our time, and the
great hope of every time --now depends on us."

"The course of this conflict is not known, yet
its outcome is certain … and we know that God is not neutral."

Did a statesman or an unbridled fanatic speak
these words?

Two days later, on September 22, Cuba denounced
this speech as the blueprint for the idea of a global military
dictatorship imposed through brute force, without international laws or
institutions of any kind.

"The United Nations Organization, simply ignored
in the present crisis, would fail to have any authority or prerogative
whatsoever. There would be only one boss, only one judge, and only one
law."

Several months later, on the 200th
anniversary of West Point Military Academy, at the graduation exercise
for 958 cadets on June 3, 2002, President Bush further elaborated on
this line of thinking in a fiery harangue to the young soldiers
graduating that day, in which he put forward his fundamental fixed ideas:

"Our security will require transforming the
military you will lead -- a military that must be ready to strike at a
moment's notice in any dark corner of the world. And our security will
require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready
for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend
our lives."

"We must uncover terror cells in 60 or more
countries…"

"…we will send you, our soldiers, where you're
needed."

"We will not leave the safety of America and the
peace of the planet at the mercy of a few mad terrorists and tyrants. We
will lift this dark threat from our country and from the world."

"Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or
impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree. … We are
in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its
name. By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a
problem, we reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in opposing it."

In the speech I delivered at a rally held in
General Antonio Maceo Square in Santiago de Cuba, on June 8, 2002,
before half a million people of Santiago, I said:

"As you can see, he doesn’t mention once in his
speech (at West Point) the United Nations Organization. Nor is there a
phrase about every people’s right to safety and peace, or about the need
for a world ruled by principles and norms."

"Hardly two thirds of a century has passed since
humanity went through the bitter experience of Nazism. Fear was Hitler’s
inseparable ally against his adversaries… Later, his fearful military
force [led to] the outbreak of a war that would inflame the whole world.
The lack of vision and the cowardice of the statesmen in the strongest
European powers of the time opened the way to a great tragedy.

"I don’t think that a fascist regime can be
established in the United States. Serious mistakes have been made and
injustices committed in the framework of its political system --many of
them still persist-- but the American people still have a number of
institutions and traditions, as well as educational, cultural and
ethical values that would hardly allow that to happen. The risk exists
in the international arena. The power and prerogatives of that country’s
president are so extensive, and the economic, technological and military
power network in that nation is so pervasive that due to circumstances
that fully escape the will of the American people, the world is coming
under the rule of Nazi concepts and methods."

"The miserable insects that live in 60 or more
countries of the world chosen by him and his closest assistants --and in
the case of Cuba by his Miami friends-- are completely irrelevant. They
are the ‘dark corners of the world’ that may become the targets of their
unannounced and ‘preemptive’ attacks. Not only is Cuba one of those
countries, but it has also been included among those that sponsor
terror."

I mentioned the idea of a world tyranny for the
first time exactly one year, three months and 19 days before the attack
on Iraq.

In the days prior to the beginning of the war,
President Bush repeated once again that the United States would use, if
necessary, any means within its arsenal, in other words, nuclear
weapons, chemical weapons and biological weapons.

The attack on and occupation of Afghanistan had
already taken place.

Today the so-called "dissidents", actually
mercenaries on the payroll of the Bush’s Hitler-like government, are
betraying not only their homeland, but all of humanity as well.

In the face of the sinister plans against our
country on the part of the neo-fascist extreme right and its allies in
the Miami terrorist mob that ensured its victory through electoral
fraud, I wonder how many of those individuals with supposedly leftist
and humanistic stances who have attacked our people over the legal
measures we were forced to adopt as a legitimate defense against the
aggressive plans of the superpower, located just a few miles off our
coasts and with a military base on our own territory, have been able to
read these words. We wonder how many have recognized, denounced and
condemned the policy announced in the speeches by Mr. Bush that I have
quoted, which reveal a sinister Nazi-fascist international policy on the
part of the leader of the country with the most powerful military force
ever imagined, whose weapons could destroy the defenseless humanity ten
times over.

The entire world has been mobilized by the
terrifying images of cities destroyed and burned by brutal bombing,
images of maimed children and the shattered corpses of innocent people.

Leaving aside the blatantly opportunistic,
demagogic and petty political groups we know all too well, I am now
going to refer fundamentally to those who were friends of Cuba and
respected fighters in the struggle. We would not want those who have, in
our opinion, attacked Cuba unjustly, due to disinformation or a lack of
careful and profound analysis, to have to suffer the infinite sorrow
they will feel if one day our cities are destroyed and our children and
mothers, women and men, young and old, are torn apart by the bombs of
Nazi-fascism, and they realize that their declarations were shamelessly
manipulated by the aggressors to justify a military attack on Cuba.

Solely the numbers of children murdered and
mutilated cannot be the measure of the human damage but also the
millions of children and mothers, women and men, young and old, who
remain traumatized for the rest of their lives.

We fully respect the opinions of those who oppose
capital punishment for religious, philosophical and humanitarian
reasons. We Cuban revolutionaries also abhor capital punishment, for
much more profound reasons than those addressed by the social sciences
with regard to crime, currently under study in our country. The day will
come when we can accede to the wishes, so nobly expressed here in his
brilliant speech by our beloved brother Reverend Lucius Walker, to
abolish such penalty. The special concern over this issue is easily
understood when you know that the majority of the people executed in the
United States are African American and Hispanic, and not infrequently
they are innocent, especially in Texas, the champion of death penalties,
where President Bush was formerly the governor, and not a single life
has ever been pardoned.

The Cuban Revolution was placed in the dilemma of
either protecting the lives of millions of Cubans by using the legally
established death penalty to punish the three main hijackers of a
passenger ferry or sitting back and doing nothing. The U.S. government,
which incites common criminals to assault boats or airplanes with
passengers on board, encourages these people gravely endangering the
lives of innocents and creating the ideal conditions for an attack on
Cuba. A wave of hijackings had been unleashed and was already in full
development; it had to be stopped.

We cannot ever hesitate when it is a question of
protecting the lives of the sons and daughters of a people determined to
fight until the end, arresting the mercenaries who serve the aggressors
and applying the most severe sanctions, no matter how unpleasant it is
for us, against terrorists who hijack passenger boats or planes or
commit similarly serious acts, who will be punished by the courts in
accordance with the laws in force.

Not even Jesus Christ, who drove the traders out
of the temple with a whip, would fail to opt for the defense of the
people.

I feel sincere and profound respect for His
Holiness Pope John Paul II. I understand and admire his noble struggle
for life and peace. Nobody opposed the war in Iraq as much and as
tenaciously as he did. I am absolutely certain that he would have never
counseled the Shiites and Sunni Muslims to let them be killed without
defending themselves. He would not counsel the Cubans to do such a
thing, either. He knows perfectly well that this is not a problem
between Cubans. This is a problem between the people of Cuba and the
government of the United States.

The policy of the U.S. government is so brazenly
provocative that on April 25, Mr. Kevin Whitaker, chief of the Cuban
Bureau at the State Department, informed the head of our Interests
Section in Washington that the National Security Council’s Department of
Homeland Security considered the continued hijackings from Cuba a
serious threat to the national security of the United States, and
requested that the Cuban government adopt all of the necessary measures
to prevent such acts.

He said this as if they were not the ones who
provoke and encourage these hijackings, and as if we were not the ones
who adopt drastic measures to prevent them, in order to protect the
lives and safety of passengers, and being fully aware for some time now
of the criminal plans of the fascist extreme right against Cuba. When
news of this contact on the 25 was leaked, it stirred up the Miami
terrorist mob. They still do not understand that their direct or
indirect threats against Cuba do not frighten anyone in this country.

The hypocrisy of Western politicians and a large
group of mediocre leaders is so huge that it would not fit in the
Atlantic Ocean. Any measure that Cuba adopts for the purposes of its
legitimate defense is reported among the top stories in almost all of
the media. On the other hand, when we pointed out that during the term
in office of a Spanish head of government, dozens of ETA members were
executed without trial, without anyone protesting or denouncing it
before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, or that another
Spanish head of government, at a difficult moment in the war in Kosovo,
advised the U.S. president to step up the war, increase the bombing and
attack civilian targets, thus causing the deaths of hundreds of innocent
people and tremendous suffering for millions of people, the headlines
merely stated, "Castro attacks Felipe and Aznar". Not a word was said
about the real content.

In Miami and Washington they are now discussing
where, how and when Cuba will be attacked or the problem of the
Revolution will be solved.

For the moment, there is talk of economic
measures that will further intensify the brutal blockade, but they still
do not know which to choose, who they will resign themselves to
alienating, and how effective these measures may be. There are very few
left for them to choose from. They have already used up almost all of
them.

A shameless scoundrel with the poorly chosen
first name Lincoln, and the last name Díaz-Balart, an intimate
friend and advisor of President Bush, has made this enigmatic statement
to a Miami TV station: "I can’t go into details, but we’re trying to
break this vicious cycle."

What methods are they considering to deal with
this vicious cycle? Physically eliminating me with the sophisticated
modern means they have developed, as Mr. Bush promised them in Texas
before the elections? Or attacking Cuba the way they attacked Iraq?

If it were the former, it does not worry me in
the least. The ideas for which I have fought all my life will not die,
and they will live on for a long time.

If the solution were to attack Cuba like Iraq, I
would suffer greatly because of the cost in lives and the enormous
destruction it would bring on Cuba. But, it might turn out to be the
last of this Administration’s fascist attacks, because the struggle
would last a very long time.

The aggressors would not merely be facing an
army, but rather thousands of armies that would constantly reproduce
themselves and make the enemy pay such a high cost in casualties that it
would far exceed the cost in lives of its sons and daughters that the
American people would be willing to pay for the adventures and ideas of
President Bush. Today, he enjoys majority support, but it is dropping,
and tomorrow it could be reduced to zero.

The American people, the millions of highly
cultivated individuals who reason and think, their basic ethical
principles, the tens of millions of computers with which to communicate,
hundreds of times more than at the end of the Viet Nam war, will show
that you cannot fool all of the people, and perhaps not even part of the
people, all of the time. One day they will put a straightjacket on those
who need it before they manage to annihilate life on the planet.

On behalf of the one million people gathered here
this May Day, I want to convey a message to the world and the American
people:

We do not want the blood of Cubans and Americans
to be shed in a war. We do not want a countless number of lives of
people who could be friends to be lost in an armed conflict. But never
has a people had such sacred things to defend, or such profound
convictions to fight for, to such a degree that they would rather be
obliterated from the face of the Earth than abandon the noble and
generous work for which so many generations of Cubans have paid the high
cost of the lives of many of their finest sons and daughters.

We are sustained by the deepest conviction that
ideas are worth more than weapons, no matter how sophisticated and
powerful those weapons may be.